Fool's Moon Entertainment

Greetings! Let's talk about world building. While the mechanics of an RPG are important ('how the world functions'), the world building -- the setting and all its moving pieces -- need to be just as solid for immersion. There are plenty of 'generic' RPGs out there (Tiny d6, GURPS, Fantasy Age, FATE, Savage Worlds, etc) which can lay out how the world functions through mechanics, but most such games lack when it comes to building the world you're going to be playing in. Then you have games which lay out a world, but it is perhaps the most vanilla world that you'll ever see -- there's nothing fresh and unique about it.  Or it's just shallow, and any differences are superficial. (Of course, Dungeons and Dragons is a huge example). So what makes a setting interesting? Here's a few things to consider: Culture -- what cultures exist? How do they interact? How long have they been there? Religion -- what pantheons exist? How do they interact? How do they...

  Magic and Technology Don't Mix I've heard this many times, and I don't believe it. The conceit is that, since magic exists,  there's no reason for technology to advance. After all, magic does it better, does it easier, does it faster. Sure. Except that's not even remotely true. How much teaching does it take to get even a modicum of skill in magic? How much does it cost to get trained? Where do you need to go for that training? How many years to get good ? What are the restrictions on spell casting? Do you need to register to be a mage and be allowed to cast certain spells? How long to learn the proper spells? Sure. Developing certain technologies may take time, but the thing about technology is that it builds upon itself. And once something's been developed, it's not too hard to learn the foundations. For example? Steam technology existed in ancient Greece. They started doing all sorts of interesting things with steam. Given time and peace, who knows wher...